Types of forum user

Hi,
we're always keen to hear suggestions for the forum, even if they're not always immediately practical with our humble overworked team. However there is one topic in particular I'm keen to hear from you about, as it should be a nice quick job I can do in my spare time.

To help the moderators we are adding various reports and warning signals to identify suspect troublemakers. You won't get to see these, but I am prepared to take the opportunity to add a label, title, description, etc based on your suggestions, to each user's post or their profile.

For example new, experienced, off-topic, or users who only sell stuff can be made more identifiable. Or a post count for the 3/4 forums, displayed by the name. We could also hierarchically classify you from rookie to big-hitter (joke).

A feedback system is not currently on the table, beyond the current system of posting to threads. Do you have any other suggestions or comments?

I think that's a pretty dangerous road to go down, asking members of the forum to give their subjective opinion on others. A simple post count and number of days banned would probably be the best option.

Apart from the "size of their hit" most posters info (such as are they just a seller, how many posts, how long a forum user) can be obtained from their profile - so maybe a "sticky" explaining this would solve many of the issues ?

Post counts and experience based labels suck big time as they are a barrier to entry. New members are the lifeblood of the forum.

A label showing how someone uses the forum would maybe allow people to identify trouble makes.

I agree. Fortunately I have extensive experience of exploratory multivariate analysis and think I can knock up some decent factors and algorithms. However I think it would be wise to identify recently registered users no matter what.

maybe not put it next to their name on each post but put it in their profile so that with one click any other user can see whether the person that they are looking at has been on here ages/only ever sells stuff etc.
almost in the style of an ebay feedback system but less descriptive.